Monk
10/13/1995 – 12/22/2011
It was a very special friendship.
No, it was a love affair.
I wasn’t dealt that kind of hand, and for sixteen years, Monk is who I came home to, and Monk is who I watched grow up.We had our own language, our own greetings, and I’m sure when I was calling him “Monkey” or “Mink” or “Friend”, he was probably calling me “Derwood” or “Cabbage” or whatever cats call their friends.
I’ve always said when the time came, I wanted to go first – the one of us who got left behind was surely going to be a mess.
When I turned thirty-five in Los Angeles – October 1995 – I was going through some Depression and I knew it would take a re-tooling to make life tolerable again. So I shaved my head and decided I needed another living thing in my tiny apartment besides me. Around Thanksgiving I found Monk at the animal hospital; somebody had just rescued him from the street. He was only about six weeks old then, and had a little scrape on his nose, which I remember took over a year to disappear. The girls at the desk had already named him “Sputnik,” but by the time we got home I had decided on “Monk.” It had nothing to do with jazz legend Thelonious Monk or my fascination with monks and monasteries. It was just short for “monkey” and sounded like a good cat-name.
I saved him.
He saved me.
Monk was toilet-trained from the start. He never had a litter box. I bought the little toilet-training kit at Petco, and invested the necessary six weeks of full attention. (it’s a little tray you put under the toilet seat and fill with litter, and over time, slowly cut away the center portion until the cat is driven to the edge of the seat, thereby “trained.”) I would come home from work and if he hadn’t done his business, I would close the bathroom door and sit on the floor next to the toilet and read a book. I built a little stairstep out of books because he was so small. I put him on the toilet and he’d jump down. And I’d put him back. And he’d jump down. When he finally did the deed, he received treats and praise and we’d get to leave the bathroom for the night!
Finally the big day came and we removed the training kit for good and it has been a wonderful thing and made both our lives easier.
To the very end, he always wanted to involve me in his toilet-going. In his eyes, he always considered how happy it made me and how much praise I gave him, so he always waited until I got home and then yelled at me to come follow him to the toilet so he could show me what he could do, and I could praise him some more.
Monk made easy transitions from apartment to apartment in Los Angeles, and then the cross-country drive to Virginia, and another up to Maine where he spent the last 5 ½ years sitting in upstairs windows and watching the Saco River and the occasional hawk. In the cold Maine winters, I put up a tent (yes, indoors) and with his electric blanket and a low-setting oil-filled electric radiator, he enjoyed many sleepy, cozy days, probably dreaming of warmer days back in California.
He was 100% an indoor cat, except one weekend in Los Angeles as a kitten, when he escaped out the window and went missing for almost two days. I had built a little window seat using a milk crate, which allowed him to be suspended out the rear window over the roof, and somehow he had outsmarted my design and got his taste of freedom.
I had only had him about a year, but I was a lunatic when I couldn’t find him. I searched and called and was absolutely distraught, and I remember the panic and solitude of that night, wondering what had become of my little boy. The next day I combed the immediate neighborhood again, calling his name in tears, and then I heard it – that sweet, tiny little “mew” coming from underneath the neighbor’s house. He hadn’t gone far!
And I think that frightening experience was enough for both of us so that he never tried again.
He loved playing hide-and-seek from me, and I would have to ask, “Where is he?” about four times before he would come tearing across the room or up and over the bed and then off to hide again, waiting for me to ask again.
He loved to be picked up and tossed onto the bed (Rocket launches!) just like any child would. He would jump off the bed and come running to my feet to be picked up and tossed again and again.
He loved chicken, especially rotisserie chicken, and he knew the word well, and could wake from a dead sleep if he heard me call it.
He was never big on milk or anything dairy, like you always imagine cats to be.
He loved back scratches, long and deep and slow. He would watch for me to walk downstairs and run to the top of the landing and call to me. From this position our faces were at the same height and I could easily reach over and rub him and scratch him. He could lie there and take it as long as I could dish it out, and he always wanted more.
Sitting around the house, he had a very simple way of getting my attention if I stopped petting him or got busy on the computer or did anything, God forbid, but focus on his scratches and massages. He would just tap me on the arm a couple times with his hand. Like he was asking a stranger for the time. Just tap-tap, and then look at me like, “Pardon me sir, do you know what time the train leaves for Boston?” Where does a cat learn such a delicate maneuver? No screaming or rubbing against me for attention, just the taps.
He loved the sound of my voice, but had definite limits on how long I could talk on the phone to somebody else and not him. If I stayed on the phone too long, he had a distinctive “mew” that he called with, letting me know he was the one that I should be talking to.
If I was feeling down, or sick, or had just been emotionally hurt, Monk knew, and would walk onto my chest and just drop there and drop his head and rest with me.
Monk’s last bill of health, a year ago, was awesome. A tiny heart murmur, and a couple teeth we should watch. Less than a week ago he became extremely lethargic and stopped eating, and dropped 2 ½ pounds. He cried out to me for no apparent reason. He hobbled slowly like a little old man with arthritis, and he couldn’t walk a straight line. The symptoms of kidney failure showed themselves hard and fast, and in some ways I’m grateful the end came on so quickly. His BUN level (blood urea nitrogen, a waste byproduct normally eliminated through kidney filtering) should have been less than 34 – his was at 179. His Creatinine level (another waste product typically filtered out) normally under 2.5, was at an astounding 10.3, which indicated more than 90% total kidney loss and the final days of Stage 4 renal failure.
He didn’t seem to be in pain so much, just disoriented and frustrated. Well, he was starving and the toxins from the kidneys were clouding his beautiful little mind, confusing him, compromising his sense of balance, and the vet assured me he was basically “drunk” from the toxins. Dying, but in a stupor. He was crying out because suddenly nothing in his world made sense anymore – and he was frightened and helpless as his brain was being poisoned, unable to eat from the pain of the ulcers in his mouth (common in renal failure).
I was forced to make a decision Wednesday morning, and that decision was, “I need one more day.”
I bundled him up and took him down to see the river, and we went for a little walk around the house and property, looking at trees and things. Mostly I just talked and sang to him and gave him lots of love. I reminded him of all our stories and adventures over the past sixteen years, and how much happiness he brought me.
This is our last photo together, this morning when I said goodbye.
My red eyes and black circles don’t tell half the story.
I will never have enough photos or enough memories, and I curse the fact that from this day forward I will start forgetting little things that made him so special.
So many people out there knew Monk, or knew of Monk, and I am so grateful you all shared in my joy and understood his importance to me.
He was my best friend for sixteen years, and I am so helpless today as I had to ask somebody to stop his suffering.
And now mine begins.
He leaves a hole in my heart the size of a lion.
I love you, my little friend.
Life will never be the same.
Life Perpendicular 